Water police take aim at small companies

William Svec, a biologist with the city of San Diego Transportation and Stormwater Department, left, records information while intern Sean Mulderig, right, takes water samples from a storm drain system channeled creek along Murphy Canyon Road. / photo by Howard Lipin * U-T

William Svec, a biologist with the city of San Diego Transportation and Stormwater Department, left, records information while intern Sean Mulderig, right, takes water samples from a storm drain system channeled creek along Murphy Canyon Road. / photo by Howard Lipin * U-T

California’s regulatory tsunami is poised to soak 14,000 mostly small companies in San Diego County that fall under a broad definition of light industry.

At a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board is expected to approve new rules on business operations designed to dramatically reduce levels of bacteria, dirt and chemicals that flow into creeks and the ocean whenever it rains or water otherwise hits the pavement. Companies statewide would have until July 15, 2015, to comply.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because in May the agency’s regional arm imposed similar regulations on local governments in San Diego County, along with parts of Riverside and Orange counties. Those regulations will apply to companies, too, so Tuesday’s proceeding will add a layer.

Taken together, the rules will require many billions of dollars in new spending. Yet they are effectively impossible to meet, scientists say.

Put another way, stormwater running down the street must be about 19 times cleaner than tap water, at least when it comes to zinc. Standards for other “pollutants” like bacteria from bird droppings or dog poop are equally incredible.

As a trip to any lagoon will demonstrate, we still allow too much litter, oil and other toxic stuff to drift into our waterways. But people don’t require a regulatory apocalypse to change habits. Thoughtful, incremental measures would suffice.

State officials say the industrial regulations aren’t as extreme as they look.

“There is no requirement to meet those values; they are guidance values,” intended to remove pollution from runoff over time using better management practices, said Greg Gearheart, senior water resource control engineer for the state agency.

Yet the rules being finalized Tuesday allow regulators to impose limits any time in the future, specifically on companies. And the May regulations for cities already mandate strict numerical limits that will apply to everybody.

In the meantime, assurances from regulators that they will be patient and flexible don’t seem to be calming anybody down.

“Freaking out” is a better description of how local governments are reacting.

San Diego County estimates that just one of the new standards, for animal bacteria in runoff, could cost cities $5.1 billion over 17 years. Last month, San Diego officials alerted Wall Street that the city faces $4 billion in new compliance spending, without a plan for getting the revenue.

Of course, the tab for governments will ultimately be paid by consumers and business owners.

Then our costs will grow considerably more, because governments can’t comply unless they get all of us to spend money, on everything from cisterns to irrigation systems to engineering and legal fees.

If you see a crew digging a moat around your favorite mall in a few years to catch every drop of stormwater, you’ll know why.